The Story of 5 Monkeys

Heard this story from a colleague today...

The Story of 5 Monkeys is a social experiment and analysis of common corporate behaviour.

An experiment was conducted by putting 5 monkeys in a cage. In the cage is a ladder and on top of the ladder is some bananas. One of the monkeys climbed up the ladder to get a banana, another monkey at the bottom of the ladder would be sprayed with water. Every time a monkey attempts to get a banana on top of the ladder, another monkey at the bottom will be sprayed. After a while, the 5 monkeys realised this trend, none of them make any attempts to get the bananas.

The experiment is continued by removing one of the 5 monkeys and replaced with a new monkey. The new monkey sees the bananas on top of the ladder, looks around and climb up to get it. The other four monkeys beat up the new monkey before he manage to climb up since they knew they would get sprayed if the new guy would have got the bananas. Confused, the new monkey tried again and got beaten up again.

One of the old monkeys is removed and a new one replaced. As a newcomer, the new monkey tries to get on top of the ladder and got beaten up as a result. The previously beaten monkey participates in punishing that poor new guy.

The experiment continues by replacing an old monkey each time with a new one until the original five monkeys are replaced with new ones. At this point, none of the monkeys will climb up the ladder to get the bananas and none of them know why! All they know is that if they do, they'll get beaten up.

That's what is happening in some organisations where employees just adhere to policies that doesn't make sense to them at all.